Regardless of the search technology being used, most search systems follow the same basic procedure for indexing and searching a hypermedia object database. First, the data to be searched must be input to the search system for indexing. Next, attributes and/or contents are extracted from the objects and processed to create an index. An index consists of data that is used by the search system to process queries and identify relevant objects. After the index is built, queries may be submitted to the search system. The query represents the user's information need and is expressed using a query language and syntax defined by the search system. The search system processes the query using the index data for the database and a suitable similarity ranking algorithm, and returns a hit-list of topically relevant objects. The user may then select relevant objects from the hit-list for viewing and processing.
A user may also use objects on the hit-list as navigational starting points. Navigation is the process of moving from one hypermedia object to another hypermedia object by traversing a hyperlink pointer between the objects. This operation is typically facilitated by a user interface that displays hypermedia objects, highlights the hyperlinks in those objects, and provides a simple mechanism for traversing a hyperlink and displaying the referent object. One such user interface is a Web browser. By navigating, a user may find other objects of interest.
In a networking environment, the components of a text search system may be spread across multiple computers. (For a more detailed description of these systems, see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/804,599, entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HIERARCHICALLY GROUPING AND RANKING A SET OF OBJECTS IN A QUERY CONTEXT BASED ON ONE OR MORE RELATIONSHIPS" to Brown et al. filed on Feb. 24, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,875,446 which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.) A computer comprises a Central Processing Unit (CPU), main memory, disk storage, and software (e.g., a personal computer (PC) like the IBM ThinkPad). (ThinkPad is a trademark of the IBM Corporation.) A networking environment consists of two or more computers connected by a local or wide area network (e.g., Ethernet, Token Ring, the telephone network, and the Internet.) (See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,852 to Attanasio et al. issued on Dec. 6, 1994 which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.) A user accesses the hypermedia object database using a client application on the user's computer. The client application communicates with a search server (the hypermedia object database search system) on either the user's computer (e.g. a client) or another computer (e.g. one or more servers) on the network. To process queries, the search server needs to access just the database index, which may be located on the same computer as the search server or yet another computer on the network. The actual objects in the database may be located on any computer on the network.
A Web environment, such as the World Wide Web on the Internet, is a networking environment where Web servers, e.g. Netscape Enterprise Server and IBM Internet Connection Server, and browsers, e.g. Netscape Navigator and IBM WebExplorer, are used. (Netscape Navigator is a trademark of the Netscape Communications Corporation and WebExplorer is a trademark of the IBM Corporation.)
To create an index for a text collection in a Web networking environment, the prior art often uses Web crawlers, also called robots, spiders, wanderers, or worms (e.g., WebCrawler, WWWWorm), to gather the available objects and submit them to the search system indexer. Web crawlers make use of the (physical) hyperlinks stored in objects. All of the objects are gathered by identifying a few key starting points, retrieving those objects for indexing, retrieving and indexing all objects referenced by the objects just indexed (via hyperlinks), and continuing recursively until all objects reachable from the starting points have been retrieved and indexed. The graph of objects in a Web environment is typically well connected, such that nearly all of the available objects can be found when appropriate starting points are chosen.
Having gathered and indexed all of the documents available in the collection, the index can then be used, as described above, to search for documents in the collection. Again, the index may be located independently of the objects, the client, and even the search server. A hit-list, generated as the result of searching the index, will typically identify the locations and titles of the relevant documents in the collection, and the user will retrieve those documents directly with their Web browser.
Refinement of queries which start as one or two words frequently consists of discovering additional words which can be added to the query, and either adding them automatically or allowing users to decide whether to add them to refine the query further. When a collection of searchable data can be accessed by a number of users simultaneously, it is frequently the case that these users interests overlap. In addition, inexperienced users of a search system could learn to use it more effectively if they were guided by an experienced user or information retrieval professional.